In a Way, Nothing's Really Changed ...

I mean, in my own experiencing of the Here and Now.

I feel very, very, very lonely.

No friends, really ... though some colleagues and acquaintances and neighbors are very kind.

No family, really ... Momma's gone ... my aunt and cousins are kind and distant ... sister estranged and lives states away ... Dad long deceased.

That's after all one reason, maybe the only reason, for this blog. I'm told ... and feel it in my bones to be true ... that Telling the Tale and Speaking the Story is a very, very deep need for any man, woman, or child who is aggrieved. I have no one to Tell my Tale to. No one to listen. So I blog ... and Tell my Tale to the Universe in hope that some stranger may pass this way and listen for a few blessed moments.

But all in all ... I do myself feel very much like a "stranger in a strange land", an "alien and exile."

How is this different from earlier in my life, though, really?

When I was a teen ... and pre-teen ... I felt very very lonely ...

No friends, really ...

No family ... beyond Dad and Mom and Sis ... no one else ... we were a very nuclear family ... and my own experiencing of my own home was very, very far from idyllic. Whose is, right? But the pervasive fear in my life at that time was very much with me at home too. Mostly connected with Dad, when he was around; and with School and adolescent and pre-adolescent Society, which, let's face it, for me, was brutal. But the Fear, the Anxiety, the Loneliness were what I grew up in and what I experienced on a daily basis ...

I'll never forget the first time I read ... I mean really read, and heard, and listened to ... the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. What an extraordinary event. How old was I ... 12 or 13 or 14 or so? And here is this Man ... this God-Man ... who seemed to value everything almost exactly the opposite of what I later came to hear termed "The World." "Blessed are the poor in spirit ..." "Blessed are those who mourn" ... "Blessed are those who are persecuted" I really latched onto the idea very quickly that this was One who was the Hope of the Hopeless. And therefore One who could become my Hope as well.

This was all back when I was, like I say, 12, 13, 14, 15 ... thereabouts. And that whole sort of contrapuntal experience of the Universe ... that the World, my Here and Now, was horribly painful, lonely, alien, cold, contemptuous, ect; and that God would love me and fight for me and be Justice to me in the Here and Now and that His Here and Now could expand my little, narrow, horrid Here and Now to include the spacious wonders of His Truth and His Peace and His Love ... that's really been with me since then. Over a period of, what now, 35-40 years.

Bringing me back to the Here and Now of today.

The World feels cold, alien, lonely, distant, contemptuous ... no change there really

I really have no friends ... no change there really either

I have very little family ... well, here I have to say that the change is enormous ... but not as great as perhaps might appear at first. Yet looking back as a teen and pre-teen I was (Oh God forgive me; Mom forgive me) simply taking Mom for granted. And since then ... and throughout my life ... she has always, always, always been there. Always. And now ... she's gone. And a Universe that already had a cold, alien face is bereft of ... well ... the only source of "always there" love and warmth that there has been.

This is, I've got to plainly face it, a first-order magnitude disaster for me. No wonder the coldness and bleakness of the Here and Now feel so much colder and bleaker. A light has gone out of the universe. And darkness covers the face of the earth.

Yet God is There. And God is Here. Here and Now. The God-Man who wept at the Tomb of Lazarus weeps I don't doubt at the grave of my Mother. The God-Man who cried out from the Cross cries out with me. The God who approved Father Job's railing at the cold, bone-crushing, brutal universe is the God who, I can Hope, approves of my own railing at the cold, bone-crushing, brutal universe.

This has not changed.

So ... plus ca change ...

And yet reading back over this ... what nice, nice reasoning ... but oh my gut still feels ripped open and my heart torn out and my blood oozing out onto the dank ground ... she is gone, she is gone, and I'm not more. Oh I'll keep on going, till the time comes for me to join her in the little plot of ground beside her own little plot of ground. But oh how it hurts how it hurts how it hurts ...

Oh Momma I miss you so much ... so much ....